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Up to the war, the Bolshevik Party belonged to the Social-Democratic International. On
August 4, 1914, the vote of the German social democracy for the war credits put an end to
this connection once and for all, and opened the period of uninterrupted and
irreconcilable struggle of Bolshevism against social-democracy.

Does this mean that the organisers of this assembly made a mistake in inviting me to
lecture? On this point the audience will be able to judge only after my lecture. To
justify my acceptance of the kind invitation to present a report on the Russian
Revolution, permit me to point to the fact that during the thirty-five years of my
political life the question of the Russian Revolution has been the practical and
theoretical axis of my thought and of my actions... At all events, the purpose of my
lecture is to help to understand. I do not intend to conduct propaganda for the
Revolution, nor to call upon you to join the Revolution. I intend to explain the
Revolution.

The Materialist Conception of History

Human society is an historically originated collaboration in the struggle for existence
and the assurance of the maintenance of the generations. The character of a society is
determined by the character - of its economy. The character of its economy is determined
by its means of productive labour. For every great epoch in the development of the
productive forces there is a definite corresponding social regime. Every social regime
until now has secured enormous advantages to the ruling class. It is clear, therefore,
that social regimes are not eternal. They arise historically, and then become fetters on
further progress. "All that arises deserves to be destroyed." But no ruling
class has ever voluntarily and peacefully abdicated. In questions of life and death,
arguments based on reason have never replaced the arguments of force. This may be sad, but
it is so. It is not we that have made this world. We can do nothing but take it as it is.

The meaning of revolution

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of
a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is in the ascendant.
Insurrection constitutes the sharpest and most critical moment in the struggle for power
of two classes...The insurrection can lead to the real victory of the Revolution and to
the establishment of a new order only when it is based on a progressive class, which is
able to rally around it the overwhelming majority of the people. As distinguished from the
processes of nature, a revolution is made by human beings and through human beings. But in
the course of revolution, too, men act under the influence of social conditions which are
not freely chosen by them but are handed down from the past and imperatively point out the
road which they must follow. For this reason, and only for this reason, a revolution
follows certain laws. But human consciousness does not merely passively reflect its
objective conditions. It is accustomed to react actively to them. At certain times this
reaction assumes a tense, passionate, mass character. The barriers of right and might are
overthrown. The active intervention of the masses in historical events is in fact the most
indispensable element of a revolution. But even the stormiest activity can remain in the
stage of demonstration or rebellion, without rising to the height of a revolution. The
uprising of the masses must lead to the overthrow of the domination of one class and to
the establishment of the domination of another. Only then have we achieved a revolution. A
mass uprising is no isolated undertaking, which can be conjured up any time one pleases.
It represents an objectively-conditioned element in the development of a revolution, just
as a revolution represents an objectively-conditioned process in the development of
society. But if the necessary conditions for the uprising exist, one must not simply wait
passively, with open mouth; as Shakespeare says: "There is a tide in the affairs of
men which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

In order to sweep away the outlived social order, the progressive class must understand
that its hour has struck and set before itself the task of conquering power. Here opens
the field of conscious revolutionary action, where foresight and calculation combine with
will and courage. In other words: here opens the field of action of the Party...

The revolutionary Party unites within itself the flower of the progressive class.
Without a Party which is able to orientate itself in its environment, appreciate the
progress and rhythm of events and early win the confidence of the masses, the victory of
the proletarian revolution is impossible. These are the reciprocal relations between the
objective and the subjective factors of insurrection and revolution.

The Causes of October

What questions does the October Revolution raise in the mind of a thinking man?

1) Why and how did this revolution take place? More correctly, why did the proletarian
revolution conquer in one of the most backward countries in Europe?

2) What have been the results of the October revolution? And finally:

3) Has the October Revolution stood the test?

The first question, as to the causes, can now be answered more or less exhaustively. I
have attempted to do this in great detail in my 'History of the Revolution.' Here I can
only formulate the most important conclusions.

The Law of Uneven Development

The fact that the proletariat reached power for the first time in such a backward count
as the former Tsarist Russia seems mysterious only at a first glance; in reality it is
fully in accord with historical law. It could have been predicted, and it was predicted.
Still more, on the basis of the prediction of this fact the revolutionary Marxists built
up their strategy long before the decisive events. The first and most general explanation
is: Russia is a backward country, but only a part of world economy, only an element of the
capitalist world system. In this sense Lenin solved the enigma of the Russian Revolution
with the lapidary formula, "the chain broke at its weakest link."

A crude illustration: the Great War, the result of the contradictions of world
imperialism, drew into its maelstrom countries of different stages of development, but
made the same claims on all the participants. It is clear that the burdens of the war
would be particularly intolerable for the most backward countries. Russia was the first to
be compelled to leave the field. But to tear itself away from the war, the Russian people
had to overthrow the ruling classes. In this way the chain of war broke at its weakest
link.

Still, war is not a catastrophe coming from outside like an earthquake, but, as old
Clausewitz said, the continuation of politics by other means. In the last war, the main
tendencies of the imperialistic system of "peace" time only expressed themselves
more crudely. The higher the general forces of production, the tenser the competition on
the world markets, the sharper the antagonisms and the madder the race for armaments, so
much the more difficult it became for the weaker participants. That is precisely why the
backward countries assumed the first places in the succession of collapse. The chain of
world capitalism Always tends to break at its weakest link.

If, as a result of exceptional unfavourable circumstances-for example, let us say, a
successful military intervention from the outside or irreparable mistakes on the part of
the Soviet Government itself capitalism should arise again on the immeasurably wide Soviet
territory, its historical inadequacy would at the same time have inevitably arisen and
such capitalism would in turn soon become the victim of the same contradictions which
caused its explosion in 1917. No tactical recipes could have called the October Revolution
into being, if Russia had not carried it within its body. The revolutionary Party in the
last analysis can claim only the role of an obstetrician, who is compelled to resort to a
Caesarean operation.

One might say in answer to this: Your general considerations may adequately explain why
old Russia had to suffer shipwreck, that country where backward capitalism and an
impoverished peasantry were crowned by a parasitic nobility and a decaying monarchy. But
in the simile of the chain and it weakest link there is still missing the key to the real
enigma: How could a socialist revolution succeed in a backward country. History knows of
more than a few illustrations of the decay of countries and civilisations accompanied by
the collapse of the old classes for which no progressive successors had been found. The
breakdown of old Russia should, at first sight have changed the country into a capitalist
colony rather than into a Socialist State.

This objection is very interesting. It leads us directly to the kernel of the whole
problem. And yet, this objection is erroneous; I might say, it lacks internal symmetry. On
the one hand, it starts from an exaggerated conception of the phenomenon of historical
backwardness in general.

Living beings, including man, of course, go through similar stages of development in
accordance with their ages. In a normal five-year old child, we find a certain
correspondence between the weight, size and the internal organs. But it is quite otherwise
with human consciousness. In contrast with anatomy and physiology, psychology, both
individual and collective, is distinguished by exceptional capacity of absorption,
flexibility and elasticity; therein consists the aristocratic advantage of man over his
nearest zoological relatives, the apes. The absorptive and flexible psyche confers on the
so-called social "organisms", as distinguished from the real, that is biological
organisms, an exceptional variability of internal structure as a necessary condition for
historical progress. In the development of nations and states, particularly capitalist
ones, there is neither similarity nor regularity. Different stages of civilisation even
polar opposites, approach and intermingle with one another in the life of one and the same
country.

The Law of Combined Development

Let us not forget that historical backwardness is a relative concept. There being both
backward and progressive countries, there is also a reciprocal influencing of one by the
other; there is the pressure of the progressive countries on the backward ones; there is
the necessity for the backward countries to catch up with the progressive ones, to borrow
their technology and science, etc. In this way arises the combined type of development:
features of backwardness are combined with the last word in world technique and in world
thought. Finally the countries historically backward, in order to escape their
backwardness, are often compelled to rush ahead of the others.

The flexibility of the collective consciousness makes it possible under certain
conditions to achieve the result, in the social arena, which in individual psychology is
called "overcoming the consciousness of inferiority". In this sense we can say
that the October Revolution was an heroic means whereby the people of Russia were able to
overcome their own economic and cultural inferiority.

But let us pass over from these historico-philosophic, perhaps somewhat too abstract,
generalisations, and put up the same question in concrete form, that is within the
cross-section of living economic facts. The backwardness of Russia expressed itself most
clearly at the beginning of the twentieth century in the fact that industry occupied a
small place in that country in comparison with the peasantry. Taken as a whole, this meant
a low productivity of the national labour. Suffice it to say that on the eve of the war,
when Tsarist Russia had reached the peak of its well-being, the national income was eight
to ten times lower than in the United States. This expresses numerically the 'amplitude'
of its backwardness if the word 'amplitude' can be used at all in connection with
backwardness.

At the same time however, the law of combined development expressed itself in the
economic field at every step, in simple as well as in complex phenomena. Almost without
highways, Russia was compelled to build railroads. Without having gone through the
European artisan and manufacturing stages, Russia passed directly to mechanised
production. To jump over intermediate stages is the way of backward countries.

While peasant agriculture often remained at the level of the seventeenth century,
Russia's industry, if not in scope, at least in type, reached the level of progressive
countries and in some respects rushed ahead of them. It suffices to say that gigantic
enterprises, with over a thousand workers each, employed in the United States less than 18
per cent of the total number of industrial workers. In Russia it was over 41%. This fact
is hard to reconcile with the conventional conception of the economic backwardness of
Russia. It does not on the other hand, refute this backwardness, but dialectically
complements it. The same contradictory character was shown by the class structure of the
country. The finance capital of Europe industrialised Russian economy at an accelerated
tempo. The industrial bourgeoisie forthwith assumed a large scale capitalistic and
anti-popular character. The foreign stockholders moreover, lived outside of the country.
The workers, on the other hand, were naturally Russians. Against a numerically weak
Russian bourgeoisie, which had no national roots, there stood confronting it a relatively
strong proletariat with strong roots in the depths of the people.

The revolutionary character of the proletariat was furthered by the fact that Russia in
particular, as a backward country, under the compulsion of catching up with its opponents,
had not been able to work out its own social or political conservatism. The most
conservative country of Europe, in fact of the entire world, is considered, and correctly,
to be the oldest capitalist country, England. The European country freest of conservatism
would in, all probability be Russia.

But the young, fresh, determined proletariat of Russia still constituted only a tiny
minority of the nation. The reserves of its revolutionary power lay outside of the
proletariat itself-in the peasantry, living in half-serfdom; and in the oppressed
nationalities.

The peasantry

The subsoil of the revolution was the agrarian question. The old feudal monarchic
system became doubly intolerable under the conditions of the new capitalist
exploitation...

But you may argue the war of the peasants against the landowners is one of the classic
elements of bourgeois revolution, and not at all of the proletarian revolution! Perfectly
right, I reply-so it was in the past. But the inability of capitalist society to survive
in an historically backward country was expressed precisely in the fact that the peasant
insurrections did not drive the bourgeois classes of Russia forward but on the contrary,
drove them back for good into the camp of reaction. If the peasantry did not want to be
completely ruined there was nothing else left for it but to join the industrial
proletariat. This revolutionary joining of the two oppressed classes was foreseen by the
genius of Lenin and prepared for him long before.

Had the agrarian question been courageously solved by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat
of Russia would not, obviously, have been able to arrive at the power in 1917. But the
Russian, bourgeoisie, covetous and cowardly, too late on the scene, prematurely a victim
of senility, dared not lift a hand against feudal property. But thereby it delivered the
power to the proletariat and together with it the right to dispose of the destinies of
bourgeois society. In order for the Soviet State to come into existence, it was
consequently necessary for two factors of a different historical nature to collaborate:
the peasant war, that is to say, a movement which is characteristic of the dawn of
bourgeois development, and the proletarian insurrection, or uprising which announces the
decline of the bourgeois movement. There we have the combined character of the Russian
Revolution...

The national question

The second revolutionary reserve of the proletariat was formed by the oppressed
nationalities, who moreover were also predominantly peasants. Closely allied with the
historical backwardness of the country is the extensive character of the development of
the State, which spread out like a grease spot from the centre at Moscow to the
circumference. In the East, it subjugated the still more backward peoples, basing itself
upon them, in order to stifle the more developed nationalities of the West. To the 70
million Great Russians, who constituted the main mass of the population were added
gradually some 90 millions of other races. In this way arose the empire, in whose
composition the ruling nationality made up only 43 percent of the population, while the
remaining 57 per cent, consisted of nationalities of varying degrees of civilisation and
legal deprivation. The national pressure was incomparably cruder than in the neighbouring
States, and not only than those beyond the western frontier, but beyond the eastern one
too. This conferred on the national problem an enormous explosive force...

The inevitability of the development of the centrifugal national movements had been
early taken into consideration by Lenin. The Bolshevik Party struggled obstinately for
years for the right of self-determination for nations, that is, for the right of full
secession. Only through this courageous position on the national question could the
Russian proletariat gradually win the confidence of the oppressed peoples. The national
independence movement as well as the agrarian movement, necessarily turned against the
official democracy, strengthened the proletariat, and poured into the stream of the
October upheaval.

The permanent revolution

In these ways the riddle of the proletarian upheaval in an historically backward
country loses its veil of mystery. Marxist revolutionaries predicted, long before the
events, the march of the Revolution and the historical role of the young Russian
proletariat...

In accordance with its immediate tasks, the Russian Revolution is a bourgeois
revolution. But the Russian bourgeoisie is anti-revolutionary. The victory of the
Revolution is therefore possible only as a victory of the proletariat. But the victorious
proletariat will not stop at the programme of bourgeois democracy: it will go on to the
programme of socialism. The Russian Revolution will become the first stage of the
Socialist world revolution.

This was the theory of permanent revolution formulated by me in 1905 and since then
exposed to the severest criticism under the name of "Trotskyism."

To be more exact, it is only a part of this theory. The other part, which is
particularly timely now, states: The present productive forces have long outgrown their
national limits. A socialist society is not feasible within national boundaries.

Significant as the economic successes of an isolated workers' state may be, the
programme of "Socialism in one country" is a petty bourgeois utopia. Only a
European and then a world federation of socialist republics can be the real arena for a
harmonious socialist society. Today, after the test of events, I see less reason than ever
to discard this theory.

Prerequisites for October

Without the armed insurrection of 7th November, 1917, the Soviet State would not be in
existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from heaven. A series of historical
prerequisites were necessary for the October Revolution.

1) The rotting away of the old ruling classes-the nobility, the monarchy, the
bureaucracy.

2) The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the
people.

3) The revolutionary character of the agrarian question.

4) The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nationalities.

5) The significant social burdens weighing on the proletariat.

To these organic preconditions must be added certain highly important connected
conditions.

6) The Revolution of 1905 was the great school or in Lenin's phrase, "the dress
rehearsal" of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviet's as the irreplaceable
organisational form of the proletarian united front in the Revolution were created for the
first time in the year 1905.

7) The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of
their immobility, and thus prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

The Bolshevik Party

But all these conditions, which frilly sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution,
were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this
victory one condition more was necessary.

8) The Bolshevik Party

When I enumerate this condition last in the series, I do it only because it follows the
logical sequence, and not because I assign the last place in the order of importance to
the Party.

No, I am far from such a thought. The liberal bourgeoisie can seize power and has
seized it more than once as the result of struggles in which it took no part; it possesses
organs of seizure which are admirably adapted to the purpose. But the working masses are
in a different position; they have long been accustomed to give, and not to take. They
work, are patient as long as they can be, hope, lose patience, rise up and struggle, die,
bring victory to others, are betrayed, fall into despondency, bow their necks, and work
again.

Such is the history of the masses of the people under all regimes. To be able to take
the-power firmly and surely into its hands the proletariat needs a Party, -which far
surpasses other parties in the clarity of its thought and in its revolutionary
determination.

The Bolshevik Party, which has been described more than once and with complete
justification as the most revolutionary Party in the history of mankind was the living
condensation of the modern history of Russia, of all that was dynamic in it. The overthrow
of Tsarism had long been recognised as the necessary condition for the development of
economy and culture. But for the solution of this task, the forces were insufficient. The
bourgeoisie feared the Revolution. The intelligentsia tried to bring the peasant to his
feet. The muzhik, incapable of generalising his own miseries and his aims, left this
appeal unanswered. The intelligentsia armed itself with dynamite. A whole generation was
wasted in this struggle.

On March Ist 1887, Alexander Ulianov carried out the last of the great terrorist plots.
The attempted assassination of Alexander III failed. Ulianov and the other participants
were executed. The attempt to make chemical preparation take the place of a revolutionary
class, came to grief Even the most heroic intelligentsia is nothing without the masses.
Ulianov's younger brother Vladimir, the future Lenin, the greatest figure of Russian
history, grew up under the immediate impression of these facts and conclusion. Even in his
early youth he placed himself on the foundations of Marxism and turned his face toward the
proletariat.

Without losing sight of the village for a moment he sought the way of the peasantry
through the workers. Inheriting from his revolutionary predecessors their capacity for
self sacrifice, and their willingness to go to the limit, Lenin, at an early age, became
the teacher of the new generation of the intelligentsia and of the advanced workers. In
strikes and street fights, in prisons and in exile, the workers received the necessary
tempering. They needed the searchlight -of Marxism to light up their historical road in
the darkness of absolutism.

Among the emigres the first Marxist group arose in 1883. In 1889 at a secret meeting,
the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party was proclaimed (we all
called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In 1903 occurred the split between
Bolsheviks and Menshiviks, and in 1912 the Bolshevik faction finally became an independent
Party.

It learned to recognise .anise the class mechanics of society in its struggles during
the events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated groups equally capable of initiative
and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of
its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested
leadership.

Such was the party in 1917. Despised by the official "public opinion" and the
paper thunder of the intelligentsia Press it adapted itself to the movement of the masses.
It kept firmly in hand the lever of control in the factories and regiments. Mare and more
the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by "nation" not the
privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then
the Bolsheviks became during the course of 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September, 1917, Lenin who was compelled to keep in hiding gave the signal,
"The crisis is ripe, the hour of insurrection has approached." He was right. The
ruling classes faced with the problems of the war, the land and liberation, had got into
inextricable difficulties. The bourgeoisie positively lost its head. The democratic
parties, the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, dissipated the last remaining bit of
confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy
of compromise and concessions to the bourgeois and feudal property owners. The awakened
army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic
advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed
nationalities of the far boundaries rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the
most important workers' and soldiers' Soviets the Bolsheviks were dominant. The ulcer was
ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And
thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with insurrection. Woe to
the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its
laws and its rules. The party faced the realities of the October insurrection with cold
calculation and with ardent resolution. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without
victims. Through the victorious soviets the Bolsheviks placed themselves at the head of a
country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe...

Can October be justified?

"Yes", some opponents will say, "the adventure of October has shown
itself to be much more substantial than many of us thought. Perhaps it was not even quite
an 'adventure'. Nevertheless, the question-What was achieved at this high cost?-retains
its full force. Have the dazzling promises which the Bolsheviks proclaimed on the eve of
the Revolution been fulfilled?"

Before we answer the hypothetical opponent let us note that the question in and of
itself is not new. On the contrary, it followed right at the heels of the October
Revolution, since the day of its birth.

The French journalist, Claude Anet, who was in Petrograd during the Revolution, wrote
as early as 27th October, 1917: "The maximalists (which was what the French called
the Bolsheviks at that time) have seized power and the great day has come. At last, I say
to myself, I shall behold the realisation of the socialist Eden which has been promised us
for so many years ... Admirable adventure! A privileged position!" And so on and so
forth. What sincere hatred was behind the ironical salutation.

The very morning after the capture of the Winter Palace, the reactionary journalist
hurried to register his claim for a ticket of admission to Eden. Fifteen years have passed
since the Revolution. With all the greater absence of ceremony our enemies reveal their
malicious joy over the fact that the land of the Soviets, even today, bears but little
resemblance to a realm of general well-being. Why then the Revolution and why the
sacrifice?

Permit me to express the opinion that the contradictions, difficulties, mistakes and
insufficiency of the Soviet regime are no less familiar to me than to anyone. I,
personally, have never concealed them, whether in speech or in writing. I have believed
and I still believe that revolutionary politics as distinguished from conservative, cannot
be built up on concealment. "To speak out that which is" must be the highest
principle of the workers' State.

But in criticism, as well as in creative activity, perspective is necessary.
Subjectivism is a poor adviser, particularly in great questions. Periods of time must be
commensurate with the tasks, and not with individual caprices. Fifteen years! How long is
that in the life of one man! Within that period not a few of our generation were borne to
their graves and those who remain have added innumerable grey hairs. But these same
fifteen years-what an insignificant period in the life of a people! Only a minute on the
clock of history.

Capitalism required centuries to establish itself in the struggle against the Middle
Ages, to raise the level of science and technique, to build railroads, to make use of
electric current. And then? Then humanity was thrust by capitalism into the hell of wars
and crises.

But Socialism is allowed by its enemies, that is, by the adherents of capitalism, only
a decade and a half to install on earth Paradise, with all modern improvements- Such
obligations were never assumed by us. The processes of great changes must be measured by
scales which are commensurate with them. I do not know if the Socialist society will
resemble the biblical Paradise. I doubt it. But in the Soviet Union there is no Socialism
as yet. The situation that prevails there is one of transition, full of contradictions,
burdened with the heavy inheritance of the past and in addition is under the hostile
pressure of the capitalistic states. The October Revolution has proclaimed the principles
of the new society. The Soviet Republic has shown only the first stage of its realisation.
Edison's first lamp was very bad. We must learn how to discern the future.

But the unhappiness that rains on living men! Do the results of the Revolution justify
the sacrifice which it has caused? A fruitless question, rhetorical through and through;
as if the processes of history admitted of a balance sheet accounting! We might just as
well ask, in view of the difficulties and miseries of human existence, "Does it pay
to be born altogether?" To which Heine wrote: "And the fool expects an
answer" ... Such melancholy reflections have - not hindered mankind from being born
and from giving birth. Even in these days of unexampled world crisis, suicides fortunately
constitute an unimportant percentage. But peoples never resort to suicide. When their
burdens are intolerable they seek a way out through revolution.

Besides who are they who are indignant over the victims of the social upheaval? Most
often those who have paved the I way for the victims of the imperialist war, and have
glorified or, at least, easily accommodated themselves to it. It is now our turn to ask,
"Has the war justified itself? What has it given us? What has it taught?"

In order to appreciate the new regime from the stand-point of human development, one
must first answer the question, "How does social progress express itself and how can
it be measured?"

The balance sheet of October

The deepest, the most objective and the most indisputable criterion says: progress can
be measured by the growth of the productivity of social labour. From this angle the
estimate of the October Revolution is already given by experience. The principle of
socialistic organisation has for the first time in history shown its ability to record
results in production unheard of in a short space of time.

The curve of the industrial development of Russia expressed in crude index numbers is
as follows, taking 1913, the last year before the war as 100. The year 1920, the highest
point of the civil war, is also the lowest point in industry-only 25, that is to say, a
quarter of the prewar production. In 1925 it rose to 75,that is,three-quarters of the
prewar production; in 1929 about 200, in 1932: 300, that is to say, three times as much as
on the eve of the war.

The picture becomes even more striking in the light of the international index. From
1925 to 1932 the industrial production of Germany has diminished one and a half times, in
America twice, in the Soviet Union it has increased four fold. These figures speak for
themselves.

I have no intention of denying or concealing the seamy side of the Soviet economy. The
results of the industrial index are extra-ordinarily influenced by the unfavourable
development of agriculture, that is to say, in the domain which essentially has not yet
risen to Socialist methods, but at the same time had been led on the road to
collectivisation with insufficient preparation, bureaucratically rather than technically
and economically. This is a great question, which however goes beyond the limits of my
lecture.

The index numbers cited require another important reservation. The indisputable and, in
their way, splendid results of Soviet industrialisation demand a further economic
checking-up from the stand point of the mutual adaption of the various elements of the
economy, their dynamic equilibrium and consequently their productive capacity. Here great
difficulties and even set backs are inevitable. Socialism does not arise in its perfected
form from the Five-Year Plan like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, or Venus from the foam
of the sea. Before it are decades of persistent work, of mistakes, corrections, and
reorganisation. Moreover, let us not forget that socialist construction in accordance with
its very nature can only reach perfection on the international arena. But even the most
favourable economic balance sheet of the results so far obtained could reveal only the
incorrectness of the preliminary calculations, the faults of planning and errors of
direction. It could in no way refute the empirically firmly established fact-the
possibility, with the aid of socialist methods, of raising the productivity of collective
labour to an unheard of height. This conquest, of world historical importance, cannot be
taken away from us by anybody or anything...

The October Revolution has laid the foundations for a new civilisation which is
designed, not for a select few, but for all. This is felt by the masses of the whole
world. Hence their sympathy for the Soviet Union which is as passionate as once was their
hatred for Tsarist Russia...

The February insurrection against the autocracy, the struggle against the nobility,
against the imperialist war, for peace, for land, for national equality, the October
insurrection, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and of those parties which supported it, or
sought agreements with the bourgeoisie, three years of civil war on a front of 5000 miles,
the years of blockade, hunger, misery, and epidemics, the years of tense economic
reconstruction, of new difficulties and renunciations-these make a hard but good school. A
heavy hammer smashes glass, but forges steel. The hammer of the revolution is forging the
steel of the people's character.

"Who will believe," wrote a Tsarist general, Zalweski, with indignation
shortly after the upheaval, "that a porter or a watchman suddenly becomes a chief
justice, a hospital attendant the director of the hospital, a barber an office-holder, a
corporal a commander-in-chief, a day-worker a mayor, a locksmith the director of a
factory?"

"Who will believe it?" But it had to be believed. They could do nothing else
but believe it, when the corporals defeated the generals, when the mayor-the former
day-worker-broke the resistance of the old bureaucracy, the wagon greaser put the
transportation system into order, the locksmith as director put the industrial equipment
into working condition. "Who will believe it?" Let anyone only try not to
believe it.

For an explanation of the extraordinary persistence which the masses of the people of
the Soviet Union are showing throughout the years of the revolution, many foreign
observers rely, in accord with ancient habit, on the "passivity" of the Russian
character. Gross anachronism! The revolutionary masses endure privations patiently but not
passively. With their own hands they are creating a better future and are determined to
create it at any cost. Let the enemy class only attempt to impose his will from outside on
these patient masses! No, better, he should not try!

The Revolution and its place in history

Let me now, in closing, attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not
only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year of 1918, in
a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval-that
belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in the past centuries on
the territories of Holland, England, France, nearly all over Continental Europe-takes its
place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaimed and opened
the domination of the proletariat. World capitalism suffered its first great defeat on the
Russian territory. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke,
and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfil its essential
function: the raising of the level of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot remain
stagnant at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force
and a sound, planned, that is, socialist organisation of production and distribution can
assure humanity-all humanity-of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the
precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses-first
of all man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical
toil. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the
blind and obscure forces which work behind his back. He will build his economy freely,
according to plan, with compass in hand.

This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through
and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason
and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, socialism must become a new step in
the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a
stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces.
Since then, the natural sciences hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated
nature down to its most secret depths.

By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgement on the nucleus of the
atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of alchemists, and turn
manure into gold and gold into manure.

Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now reigns over more courageously the
industrious will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to order men
blindly almost like the bee or the ant. Slowly and very haltingly he approached the
problems of human society.

The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism in a domain
which had been ruled by dead tradition.

From the church, critical thought went on to the State. Born in the struggle with
absolutism and the mediaeval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of
the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of
parliamentarianism.

Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political
rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. But
between nature and the state stands economic life. Technical science liberated man from
the tyranny of the old elements-earth, water, fire and air-only to subject him to its own
tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature to become a slave to the machine, still worse,
a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic
fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rise up to the stratosphere,
who converses on invisible waves from the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of
nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our
epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in
disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and
obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to
stretch his weary limbs and every man and every woman, not only a selected few-become a
citizen with full power in the realm of thought.

The Future of Man

But this is not yet the end of the road. No, it is only the beginning. Man calls
himself the crown of creation. He has a certain right to that claim. But who has asserted
that present-day man is the last and highest representative of the species Homo Sapiens?
No, physically as well as spiritual!y he is very far from perfection, prematurely born
biologically, with feeble thought, and has not produced any new organic equilibrium.

It is true that humanity has more than once brought forth giants of thought and action,
who tower over their contempories like, summits in a chain of mountains. The human race
has a right to be proud of its Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Beethoven, Goethe, Marx,
Edison and Lenin. But why are they so rare? Above all, because almost without exception
they came out of the middle and upper classes. Apart from rare exceptions, the sparks of
genius in the suppressed depths of the people are choked before they can burst into flame.
But also because the processes of creating, developing and educating a human being have
been and remain essentially a matter of chance, not illuminated by theory and practice,
not subjected to consciousness and will...

Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in
this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony,
will open the road for a new and happier race.